


Every Good Boy Deserves Favour

by Gorrlaus



Category: Star Trek: The Next Generation
Genre: Androids, Childhood
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-08-27
Updated: 2015-09-13
Packaged: 2018-02-14 17:19:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 3,280
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2200341
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gorrlaus/pseuds/Gorrlaus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Some loose ramblings about the fourth or fifth android son of Noonien and Juliana Soong.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [The Things that Juliana Didn't Say](https://archiveofourown.org/works/63794) by [pensnest](https://archiveofourown.org/users/pensnest/pseuds/pensnest). 



There is input. It’s undefined at first. Gradually the input is sorted into:

\- light  
\- sound  
\- pressure (gravitational pull)  
\- particles of matter

The visual input is… The knowledge comes unbidden: _Definition: white. Definition: bright. Definition: blurry_.

The world is: white, bright and blurry.

Audio input: 120 - 130 Hz. _Modulated_. Knowledge: _A human - male - ca 50 years - speaking Standard._

Role: _receiving_. Speaker’s role: who? _He is Father._

 

————

 

Noonien has worked long and hard for this moment. ”Lore? Lore.”

The body moves in the dentist chair. It focuses its bleary eyes, tentative, blinks twice.

”Lore. Hello. I’m your father. Welcome. Let’s test your motor skills. Can you get out of the chair please?”

The android looks at its surroundings, then at Noonien. He opens his mouth as if to speak.

Juliana tenses up as she stands over by the door. She always thinks the moment when they first are awakened is off-putting, surreal and slightly scary, like something from an old horror story.

She can see the pink tongue moving, but no sound comes out. It closes its mouth again with a click.

”Son, can you get up? Get out of the chair.”

There’s a twitchy movement. The new being bends its back, leans forward, bends it legs….and falls out of the chair with a thud. It lies flat on the floor without moving, looking up at her smiling husband.

”No son….stand up.” Noonien straightens his legs, shows the being how to stand. ”The legs go under your body. You can do it. Look Juliana, he’s turning over!”

Their new ”son” uses its long arms to push itself up into standing. It sways slightly to and fro, moving its weight from one foot to the other.

Noonien is ecstatic. ”Fantastic! Can you say 'Father'? Say 'Father'!”

It opens its mouth again, like a fish. ”EEEEEE. Eeeee.”

”Good, good. No cascade failure yet. He’s doing good Juliana. Lore, say ’Father’. Speak.”

Its eyes look like they’re about to bulge out of its head. This time its mouth is closed. ”Mm-mm.”

”No, use your lips. Fa-th-er.”

”Noonien, I don’t think…”

It quickly turns its head to look at Juliana, its eyes not blank nor empty, not like B4 at all.

It already knows.

Juliana gives it her best friendly smile. ”Hello Lore. I’m your mother”. Warm and welcoming. Just like Noonien instructed her before they started.

Its eyes is intently fixed on her mouth, watching how her lips work to form words. When it finally makes a sound its voice is even, emotionless. ”Eeello. M-other.”

Noonien laughs and gives his wife a hearty, one-armed hug. ”Hahah! I knew it! This time it’d be perfect! The others never caught on this quickly!”

  
—

  
Fourteen hours later, it is far from perfect. Juliana’s frustration is mounting. It has become painfully apparent to her and Noonien just how difficult it is to fine-tune this incredibly complicated positronic brain. It might be only twice as advanced as B4, but the adjustment time seems to have multiplied into infinity.

She has been sitting up all night with their new android while Noonien has been running between them and his work bench, adjusting parameters and switching q-bits. He claims the adjustments has to be done while the android is awake, so he can see the effect right away and thus get the settings just right.

At 2 am there was almost a cascade failure, and at 3 am… well 3 am is a blur she doesn’t want to think about. Her husband had to destroy some motor servos to quickly get to the limbic system. At least their ’son’ has stopped screeching now, and the violent twitching has ceased.

The android's eyes are wide open. It seems overwhelmed, clambering onto her and not even letting her leave to visit the bathroom. She tried this half an hour ago but it didn’t go down well. She feels a bit silly with the body of a grown man partly in her lap, holding onto her arm for dear life, but it's the only way to keep him in the dentist’s chair while Noonien is doing his adjustments.

"Mother, Father, there are warnings. It doesn't make sense. It's wrong." Lore says shakily, his voice fading over into emotionlessness: " _Warning: right occipital lobe failure imminent. Warning: left occipital lobe failure imminent._ "

”Ok, now I think… this is gonna work. I'll just move this connector -”

”IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII”

”Noonien!” She has to throw her head back to avoid getting butted in the face by a hard duranium skull, and almost succeeding. Pain shoots up from her bottom lip as the android desperately clings to her arm like a drowning man.

”EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE”

”Damn!” Noonien says. trying to move with Lore’s head in order to make more adjustments. It’s not easy as their son is growing increasingly frantic, twitching his head around like he's being electrocuted. ”Ok, all right!” Noonien reaches down and finally turns off the android.

All of Lore’s 100 kg goes limp and lifeless in Juliana’s arms. She feels inadequate, not being able to help either of them.

”Did he hurt you? He did. I'm so sorry!”

”Just a split lip.”

He gives her a hankie for the blood and hastily kisses her forehead. ”I’m so sorry Juliana. We’ll wait until you have tricordered that. Meanwhile I’ll wipe his memory from the last hour. He can’t be allowed to see blood or any injuries this early on. Damnit!”

Her husband is flush-faced and annoyed, she call tell he is blaming himself for failing to set this one up right, for her split lip, for keeping her up all night.

The body is heavy, but it’s easier than she expected to untangle herself from its slender limbs. She takes the opportunity not only to still the blood flow, but also to catch a well-needed bathroom break.

Noonien is talking when she gets back, maybe with her or maybe to himself. ”Why isn’t this working? The basic emotions should be sufficiently adapted by now…at least hysteria is working just fine but not much else!”

He adds a couple of lines of code and moves another connector. ”Ah! The simulated microbiota signals. I didn’t think of the difference in bacteria cultures, and I used yours for the simulation. How stupid of me. Well you live and you learn.” He looks up at her from over his workbench. ”You look good with that lip.”

She smiles away the last of the swelling as her body finishes the healing process. Noonien returns her smile, moving to face the reformatting programme running on the display. He waits for the signal (’60 minutes erased') then hits the switch in the android’s back.

The android opens his pale, spooky eyes immediately. He appears calm and composed. ”Mother, Father, what is happening? Why?”

Juliana lets out a sigh of relief. He shows no inclination to screech or twitch violently, the only thing amiss that she can see are small tics in his face and neck. He’s out of the woods for now.

”Lore, your father is just doing some adjustments to make you perfect.” she says, putting her hands on his shoulders and squeezing reassuringly. She notes to her surprise that she really is relieved he didn’t die, and not only for Noonien’s sake.

The android looks up at her and smiles weakly, a human smile. ”’ _Perfect_ ’. I would like that.”

Yes, she has begun to like this one. She dearly hopes and prays they won’t have to give up on him too, like the others before him.


	2. Penis

”Mother!”

”Yes, what is it?”

”Mother!”

”Yes??”

”Come and look.”

She walks out into the garden. Her son sits on the low wall, his pants unbuttoned, a hefty erection pointing up from his groin. ”Mother, why is it doing this?” He pokes it forlornly with a finger, making it sway back and forth.

”Oh. Well, that is only natural. That part is known to behave like that.” She looks desperately around the garden for Noonien. There is a small chance he might actually be around to help her out, since it is almost noon and time for lunch. But no husband is to be seen. He must still be locked in his lab, as per usual.

Lore looks at it with a puzzled expression. ”It did this earlier today as well, when I was at the market place watching the barley maids. But I didn’t take it out then because I remembered what you said about naked skin. And nobody else had theirs out. Still, people looked and laughed.”

”Yes…when it gets like that, you should not show it to anybody. Then you have to hide it, or make it go away.” She sighs. ”I will have to talk to your father about this. He probably didn’t intend it to go like that in public. At least not yet.” 

Or who knows what her husband intended. She never thought it was a good idea that Noonien had copied his own biological functions into their son, including his libido. Well, the deed was done. Now it was just the tiny detail left of explaining to the android what was what, getting a match between the reptile brain and the emotional centrum.

”Come here darling. Let’s get you inside to let it go down by itself. Don’t think about the barley maids anymore. Think about…agriculture?” She groans at herself. 

Lore looks at her, startled. ”Mother, are you well?”

She laughs out loud as she leads her confused son into the kitchen.


	3. Buttercup

The childred stopped playing in the rabbit pen when he went past on the road below. They grew silent, then curious. One of them called out his name, and now he’s up here with them and their rabbits. They look at him with their big young eyes, politely not asking about his skin.

”This is my rabbit. Her name is Mauve.” The girl with red hair whose name is Cammy Simril pets the rabbit in her lap. It is eating leaves. He nods, not knowing what to say. Children are new to him since he doesn’t have siblings, and is not really a child. His parents think it is good for him to interact with all members of the colony, so this is what he is attempting to do. He registers the children’s darting hands, their smell, where they look. There are six of them, and 18 of the rabbits.

”He looks weird” one of them say behind his back. Kalyn Galvern, daughter of Merid and Asof Galvern. ”Why is his eyes yellow? Is he really a robot?”

He ignores this since Kalyn isn’t addressing him. The child Cammy tugs on his sleeve to get his attention.

”Mauve had babies. They are getting big now. Do you like to hold one?” The girl opens the roof of the rabbit pen and waves him closer. ”You can have one if you want. My dad says we have too many now.”

”Yes I would like to aquire a rabbit. Thank you, Cammy.”

He picks up a black and white fur ball. It is warm as it settles into his lap. He strokes it over its back. It’s very soft.

”That one is a girl. Her name is Buttercup.”

The rabbit’s nose twitch up and down, up and down. Rabbits are mammals. Their eyes poke out on the sides, indicating they are a prey animal. While predators have their eyes facing forward, rabbits need a wide field of vision to quickly spot any approaching dangers.

Its nose is twitching even more as it smells his arm, its whiskers tickling his fine hairs. It must have a large olfactory neural center. He takes a firm hold of its skull and tears its cranium open to see how it works on the inside.

Holding the kicking body in a firm grip, he peers down into the brain. His studies are somewhat disturbed by the children's screaming. The screams grow fainter as the children move away. Maybe they are afraid of blood. He knows that some humans are. Or maybe they were in a hurry to go somewhere.

He pokes around in its brain until adult shouting voices come closer.

—

 

Juliana is stirring the pot with rabbit stew and listens to Noonien going off about rights and wrongs. Their son is not taking it in silence though.

”You said I can’t destroy or take other people’s things! I didn’t kill HER rabbit, she had just given it to me.”

”It’s different!” Noonien slams something down on the table, his hand maybe. She adds a bit of pepper to the stew.

”Why? The butcher Malcom Kader kill lots of rabbits over at the meat shop. You and Mother eat rabbit stew every Tuesday. You’re gonna have it now, too.”

”It’s different!!”

”Why?”

She adds pepper again, forgetting she has already added it. Well, Noonien won’t notice in this state. She picks it up and brings it over to the table.

As Noonien draws in air for another tirade, she puts the pot down in front of him with a meaningful bang. He closes his mouth. She turns to the android. ”Because that rabbit wasn’t just ’some rabbit’. It was a pet. It had a name and was loved, as an individual. I e not replaceable. We differ between rabbits and other rabbits.”

She can see her son is confused. He looks accusingly at the steaming pot, its insides the cause of why his parents are mad at him. Juliana starts to scoop up the rabbits’ earthly remains into two bowls.

”Nevertheless, it was nice of Cammy’s parents to give us the rabbit. Do you want some, Lore?”

”No thank you mother. I have no appetite.” Juliana frowns inwardly at the tone and meaning of his words. _I am not like you._ She studies her son over the rim of her glass. His likeness to Noonien still startles her every day, though it getting less and less disconcerting.

Lore plays with a fork, pushes it forwards, then pulls it backwards. Any minute now he will asked to be excused and go to the astro lab and look at space through the telescope.

He finally looks up from his cutlery exercise. ”I have a name. This means I am not replaceable?”

”Of course you’re not replaceable sweetheart! You’re our son!” She rises from the chair to grab his hand, squeezes it with a smile she hopes is reassuring. He looks at her with his unnatural eyes and smiles back, seemingly comforted.

Lore doesn’t asked to be excused this evening, and as Noonien gets fed his mood gradually lightens. They start to discuss the gravitational pull of multi-universes, something that is not in her field of interest.

Imagine, how this constructed man outsmarts her husband many times over when it comes to astrophysics, but struggles to get the concept of the illogical logic that is empathy and attachment.

She looks down at the small leg-bone on her plate. She has to have a serious discussion with Noonien about Lore’s personality. They got to make some changes, or it will take a long, long time to make him a proper member of the colony.


	4. The perfect knit

Did they really prepare enough for this? This; the new machine - their son. He is so very human-like, but with an intelligence that seems to be limitless and a mind that expands exponentially with every passing second. It grows like wild thorns, like a unruly jungle, but Noonien thinks it's all going according to plan.

She overheard her husband in the lab yesterday, talking to himself while marvelling over a section of coded neural network that he, Noonien, did not build. The android had done it by itself, allocating more room for memory storage and moving partitions around to free neural clusters for more efficient processing. A simple enough adjustment, but she suspects that might just be the tip of the iceberg. Perhaps Lore is already better at the theory of positronic designs than Noonien, having had ample android-time to investigate his own brain at night when the rest of the world refuelled their biological systems with sleep. She hopes Lore won't think himself into a cascade failure one of these days.

 -

 

"Hello, Mother."

She looks up from her knitting as Lore walks into the small living room, bending down to avoid hitting the low wooden door-beam. "You are still knitting that pair of socks, I see."

"I am. I only begun them yesterday, so it's hardy 'still'. A pair of socks takes me at least four evenings."

Lore plonks down on the sofa next to her, thin limbs flopping arrogantly around. "Do you want me to finish them for you? I could do it in about 20 seconds. Easily." He peers down on her knitting. "Probably 10, since the yarn is even and the tools are metal. I'll take care to make it even."

She smiles at his eager expression. Always so willing to help. "No thank you, darling. Knitting is as much about the relaxing nature of the work, as it is about the finished items. The result doesn't have to be perfect either."

He looks thoughtfully with yellow eyes at her knitting needles moving, click, click, no doubt judging the pace as hopelessly slow, thinking about inventing new ways to knit, already blue-printing knitting replicators. How will they ever be able to keep him stimulated on this rural, far-away colony? There are not even any spaceships around to leave the place in. Sometimes the place is too small also for her. A bit claustrophobic even.

"I s -" Lore's face spasms, a fault from the night he was activated that they haven't gotten around to correct yet. "I see. I was wondering why Father haven't built a knitting automaton for you already, but that would explain it."

"You know that humans are a leisure-prone race that take pleasure in small things."

"They are slow and stupid and they bore me. Well, not you of course. Nor Father. But the others. I do not care for them."

He leans back and against her shoulder. Juliana sighs and begins another row.

"I'm sure the farmers will take your advice eventually, sweetheart. I will go and talk to them tomorrow."

Getting Lore to be accepted by the colony had been difficult. Or rather, it hadn't been achieved yet. But they would get there eventually, as a family. The android was still maturing. What could you really ask of a three-month old? The rough edges needed to be sanded down, and he'd have to learn to tone down the bluster and arrogance. And people would surely warm up to him and let him help them with their computers and harvesters and what not.

Noonien had mentioned he was going to give Lore's mind another go in a few days, installing additional moral routines that would benefit their son's personality greatly. Erase a few memories here, snip a neural path there. Then he would be on the right track to become a proper human humanoid. Everything would be fine.

"Mother, can you tell me a story?"

She puts her knitting down and gives a little flattered laugh. Lore could just search his own databanks for any story he wished. Before his activation they had tanked him full of history, mythology, sagas, and, well, _lore_ , all the tales they could find in the universe. But for some reason he often asked for her to tell stories, either new ones she made up on the spot or re-tellings of old classics.

Juliana puts her arm around her android son and squeezes his shoulder. Almost like a proper family.

"Of course, honey. What would you like to hear?"


End file.
